


place your little hands in mine;

by fracturedvaels



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Mental Illness, Depression, F/F, Fix-It, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-22 23:32:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4854833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fracturedvaels/pseuds/fracturedvaels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rescuers find Josh before he succumbs to the hunger. But that doesn’t mean that everything is going to be okay, because since when has anything ever been okay?</p>
            </blockquote>





	place your little hands in mine;

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd. Please let me know if you see any mistakes.
> 
> For my best friend Matt, who is also climbing class trash, and also somewhat for Shea, who suffers through our crying like the champ they are.

The world tastes and smells metallic.

Not the metallic of blood, but the metallic of old water; stale, like how mountain rocks taste. He remembers being small, so small, and running too fast and he remembers tripping on a rock and smashing his mouth on gravel. But that had been better, because Mom and Dad had been there, and even though his mouth stung and he cried they didn't seem to mind.

Sometimes, when he's feeling awful, he picks up a stone.

Awful habit. Bad, really; he's not shoveling fistfuls of gravel into his mouth. He just wants the memory from the taste, and he wants to be small again. But not like this – not like this, so small and alone, and he shakes so badly because everything  _hurts_.

He wants to scream, mostly at nothing. Wants to hurt himself, so he does, because he can't hurt anyone else. He slams his fists into the walls till the sides of his hands are torn up, and he yells at the shadows,  _you left me, you left me, you left me!_

Part of him refuses to believe they did it on purpose. Mostly, he just accepts it. They left him, they left him, they left him.

And it feels like a blur, of sharp stones piercing his hands, of metallic water and pebble on his tongue. He wonders if he'll starve. Sometimes he finds bodies, things he thinks are those monsters – what Hannah was. He doesn't want to be that. He leaves them when he can, when he can muster the strength, but sometimes he lies down and prays it wakes up and kills him because he'd rather be dead than be like them.

This goes on for days. He doesn't know it's days; but it's days, and he subsists off water and he thinks he's going to  _die._  Thinks he should die. This got out of hand.

Not that it was ever  _in_  hand.

He goes until he finds an alcove. It's got a musty tarp in the corner that's stiff and smells like old dead wood, and he wraps it around himself like a burial shroud and he waits for the cold and the dark to claim him.

* * *

 

Chris has never been tasered before.

Of course, that was another thing he could add to the list of things he'd done. Be chased by monsters. Lose his best friend to a saw. Get him back. Lose him  _again._

And now he could add tasered.

It wasn't his fault. He thought Josh was  _dead_. Mike had said – and Sam – and they had – and it didn't  _matter_ , because they had been wrong.

Chris had been  _so scared_. It wasn't his fault he couldn't hold back. He needed to know, he needed to see; and sure, he knew he should've listened, but he didn't, he  _couldn't_ , and he tried to and -

And now he could add 'being tased' to the list. The list that didn't even have a name; except, perhaps, 'The List'. Or maybe 'Awful Things That Happened'. Or perhaps 'Horrible Things Done to Me.' Or 'Things I Really Shouldn't Have Had To Put Up With But Did'. Or, even, 'Stuff I, Christopher, Put Up With That I Really Shouldn't Have, I Shouldn't, I Really Shouldn't, And Yet Somehow I Did'.

It was list worthy.

His mouth was so dry. Someone brought him a Sprite, but he didn't drink it; someone brought him medicine, and he took it, but he didn't want to. It made the world melt away and spin and he was with Josh, and spinning Josh, and Josh was happy and he hadn't smiled in so, so long.

“He's okay?” Was the first thing out of his mouth. Turning his head hurt. His neck had grown stiff and it shot up to the back of his head as he lolled his head to the side, trying to look at the blurry nurses.

They might have looked at him, or they might have turned away. He couldn't tell without his glasses.

“He's okay?” Chris repeated, trying to sit up. His arm slipped from under him and he slid a bit, to the side; the nurses were by him quickly, pushing him to lay back down.

“Please,” he reached out and grabbed one's arm, not roughly as he could've, because he still couldn't grasp reality let alone arms. “He's my best friend. Just tell me he's okay.”

Chris couldn't make out features, but he could see her skin. Dark as coal, maybe, with a smear of red and a smear of white. Eyes? Lips, he guessed.  _Lips aren't white_ , he tells himself as she smooths his hair.

“We think so,” she tells him, and then the world is fuzzier again and he knows he's saying 'thank you' and 'please', more than he has in years.

* * *

 

And it takes days. Days, and days, and days, and people come and they go and his parents come and they go. Matt comes, and he doesn't go, not immediately.

“Found your wallet,” he says, and he's dug through it, because he put the picture of Chris and Josh that Emily took two years ago out and leaned it on the vase.

“Did you find him?” Chris has his glasses, back. He can make out things. He can make out faces. The nurse's lips were red, not her eyes. She's lovely, with twists in her hair and carefully kept nails and the kind of face Chris could've fallen in love with.

Could've, operative. She was lovely. Nothing was more beautiful than the sight of Joshua Washington being wheeled past him.

“No,” Matt says, and for a moment Chris wonders if he's been dreaming things. There's a sudden drop in his stomach – was that real? Did he see Josh? Did he make it up? God, please, no – and Matt leans back in his chair, pinches the bridge of his nose. “SARs did. Of course.”

Chris still hasn't recovered from the sudden drop in his stomach. He feels like he sat up way too quickly.

“He's… I won't say he's okay.” Matt's honest, at least. It's now that Chris realizes that he's not wearing his own clothes. He has hospital scrubs on. He looks so, so tired. “He'll survive. I don't know if that's good.”

Chris braces himself to hear it. He's heard it before. He's heard it dozens of times. Sometimes he thinks he gets angrier than Josh does at those words, and he worries he doesn't have right to be angry.

But Matt doesn't say it. There is no 'he's a psycho'. There isn't a 'he's unhinged'. Matt doesn't even say 'you need to let him go'.

Instead he says, “you should go see him. When they'll let you walk around. He was asking for you.”

As if Chris needs to be told to go see Josh.


End file.
